


purgatory is an arcade

by saiyaman



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: AU sorta, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slice of Life, Yakuza, basically the events of hanas life happen like... 15 years before they do in canon, chapters will be tagged w additional stuff, cyborgbunny, genji's a philandering little shit, hanzo is an asshole in this im sorry hanzo mains you're still valid, started writing this before the dva short came out so it may seem a little off now lmao, there's no magic dragons sorry dfhkfd
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-06-05 12:17:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15170591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saiyaman/pseuds/saiyaman
Summary: It's 2063. The Omnic Crisis is over, most of South Korea's coastline has been ravaged, and a girl matching the description of a long since assumed dead MEKA pilot has resurfaced in a quiet district of Tokyo.Hana doesn't see a future for herself; Genji's just trying to get as far away as possible from his.





	1. touchdown

**Author's Note:**

> hey so uhhh i've always liked the concept of young genji/hana & the dynamic they'd have, theyre C U T E together, but there's like next to no content for it so I stuck my grubby hands all over overwatch's timeline and this happened  
> it originally started as a halfassed yakuza AU because i've been playing way too much rgg lately, then it turned into something way more focused on hana & her backstory because i think she has so much potential as a character but in-game she's just "funny teenager eat dorito chip". Let Hana Be Serious Just Once Jeff You Coward then i'll shut up
> 
> main things i gotta point out beforehand - the timeline's a little bent here and there; some stuff that happens later in canon (eg. hana being born) happens around the time of the omnic crisis in this. also, dva wasn't recruited into overwatch when she was 19 (will get explained later), and remained in the military until Shit Happened that lead to her ending up in japan. gonna leave the rest Intentionally Vague until later lmao
> 
> (i'm also gonna apologize in advance for any lore/dates that i get wrong bc i know it's gonna happen)

Somewhere in the world, some phone, some screen, some hologram, lights up with the face of an eighteen-year-old Korean girl. She’s wearing headphones, her face is made up like she’s about to step onto the set of a film, her lips are curved into a wicked grin, and there’s a blazing fire in her eyes.

She looks right at the camera. “Hello-hello, world! D.Va here. I’m comin’ at you again with another surprise stream!”

As she winks, the chat – displayed both on the side of the screen and in the background of the camera – explodes with greetings, cheers, and confessions of undying love.

“Check it – today we’re gonna be taking on _this_ big guy,” she explains, swapping to the camera mounted on the front of her mech. She’s hurtling towards a gargantuan piece of machinery, half-submerged in the sea. Huge, dark gatling guns are mounted on the ends of its arms, rotating too fast for the human eye to keep track of as they pump out thousands upon thousands of bullets at the colorful mechs swarming it. Smaller machines - more omnics - fly around it like bees.

“This is _nothing!_ " hoots Hana with a boisterous laugh. "I’m snoozing over here! Dae-hyun, how’s it looking?”

As she waits on a response, she tugs at the two steering throttles in her hands, jerking the mech to the side so it’s on a crash course with the rolling waves far below her.

“ _All good, Hana! Nothing up its sleeve besides those two big guys and a couple of missiles. You got this!”_

“Heh, I don’t need you to tell me that twice,” she sneers before jerking the controls back, bringing the mech into a clean upwards curve. Just as she planned, three of the little bees are now all in her direct field of vision, completely oblivious to the fact that they were about to get vaporized, just _asking_ to be blasted into next week. She wastes no time, whooping as she pulls all sorts of triggers and a mix of bullets and missiles shoot out the front of her mech.

“Hell yeah! Look at those fireworks!” The chat is bursting at the seams in the corner of her eye as the omnics explode and shrapnel rains down around her. She flips a few switches, keeping a close watch on the other sentries now turning their attention towards her.

" _We're on our way in, Hana. Hang tight,"_ says another voice from somewhere within the machine's console. A window pops open in the corner of the dashboard displaying two more MEKA units; they're roaring over the crests of waves, presumably towards Hana.

"No problem, I've got you covered! Better hurry up and get here before I knock 'em all out!" she calls, before hitting a few more switches and carving up part of the larger omnic's legplate.

She’s the vanguard, the hotshot, and she fucking _loves_ it. Fire billows out from the exhaust pipes on the back of her mech as the turbo clicks in, sending her careening up and up, into the heat of the fight.

“Let’s do this!”

 

 

ー

 

 

**2063** **年、夏** **Summer, 2063**

 **花村区、東京市、日本** **Hanamura, Tokyo, Japan**

 

It’s noon; the sun sits high in the sky over a sea of washed-out stone streets and low-lying roofs, and in the distance, skyscrapers glimmer all across the horizon. Narrow roads weave between cramped buildings; those that aren’t lucky enough to be shadowed by the structures around them are subjected to the sun’s torment and appear to be radiating waves of heat. An occasional biker or group of teenagers drifts from one patch of sunlight to another, or in and out of a store, but otherwise the city is quiet for such a decent hour of the day.

As Hana stares at the landscape from out the car's tinted window, all she can think is that it looks dead.

Her driver stops at some point and announces – well, it’s more of a mumble, really – that they’ve arrived. She promptly gathers her things, which consist of her serviceless phone and backpack, and mumbles a thank-you at him before slipping out the door.

It’s _hot_.

The car scurries off behind her, leaving the girl standing alone in a place completely unfamiliar to her. Despite all the hardships she’s been through, her legs wobble beneath her as she takes in the sight of the city. Buildings old, new, and renovated; a small pond sitting in a neatly-kept square; cars crammed up to the curbs on either side of the roads, baking under the sunlight; Tokyo's skyline watching from beyond Hanamura’s perimeter, like an ocean surrounding a remote island.

This is her new home. Best stop gawking and get used to it already.

 

ー

 

It takes Hana a while to get on the right track in finding the address she has open on her phone. At one point she thinks she’s going the right way, but then she’s wrong and she has to start over. It doesn't help that the address format here's a pain in the ass. She wasn’t expecting it to be this hard given where she’s from and how small the district of Hanamura is, yet here she is, wandering like a tourist.

Back in Busan she could navigate anywhere on her own – even if she spent a bulk of her time living there indoors. She knew landmarks, had a feel for how things were built. And there were so many tourists that there were maps and guides posted all over the place. At least until shit hit the fan in '56, but... yeah.

If only she had GPS, she thinks. If only they’d given her _that._ Living off one set of clothes was one thing on its own, but not having _service!?_ It’s outright _cruel_.

Now she’s nearly sweating through the off-white blouse they’d given her for her trip, and she can feel her skin starting to burn even through the fabric. It's been a while since she was out in sun this intense, and she lazily wonders if it's even good for her health. Where the hell _is_ the place? It can’t be this hard to pick out an apartment complex in an area as old-fashioned as this.

She spots an old couple chatting idly in one of the open shops and contemplates for the umpteenth time asking for directions. But she still hasn't fully recovered from the embarrassing conversational blunder that was her exchange with the baggage guy at the airport, she just bites her tongue and keeps to herself. So she strolls onwards, turning to an alley. It's packed with trash bags, but on the upside the buildings are so close together that there's not a single spot of sunlight leaking through. Relishing the shade, Hana sighs.

Messing around on her phone some more, she tries to get used to the feeling of it in her hand. It's a totally different model from her old one. Such a weird detail to pick up on, yet it bothers her anyway. Why couldn't they get her a phone like her old one? It wouldn't be that hard. One less thing to have to readjust herself to.

Hana stands there, leaning against a wall, until she realizes she's getting _way_ too upset about the whole thing. Angry at herself, now, she shoves the device in her pocket and storms the rest of the way down the alley. Her eyes feel puffy.

As she emerges onto another sidestreet, she's greeted with an inviting sight; a vending machine. It's a nice, deep shade of blue, and is sitting in a patch of shade at that. Hana's feet are moving before she knows it, hands fumbling around in her bag for some coins. In a rush, she drops a few as she's trying to shove them all into the coin slot and curses under her breath. Sweat drips off her forehead. She scrapes the coins off the ground and punches a button for strawberry seltzer-water, chugs it down faster than is probably healthy, then tosses the bottle and makes a beeline for the street corner. The bottlecap remains in her hand without her realizing it, and idly she fidgets with it, running her thumb around the ridges on its edge.

Finally, she reaches a wider road. Hana lets out a sigh, staring up at the sky. It's empty, save for a few clouds. Somehow, that's relieving to her.

Unfortunately, this area isn't much different from the last few. No landmarks, nothing to give her a sense of direction. Like some kinda horror game with a mundane setting.

But as she gives the buildings a good surveying, she stops and does a double-take at the nameplate on a mid-sized and kinda run-down building. The bottlecap nearly drops from her grip as her hand flies into her bag, quickly finding her phone.

 _"Utatori Building"_ , the page reads.

Hana's hazel eyes are wide as they move from the screen to the sign, haphazardly attached to a metal gate. _Utatori Building,_ she reads.

_Yeah. YEAH. YEAH!!!  
_

 

ー

 

The main office is as stuffy and cramped as you’d expect. It’s clogged with shades of gray, save for the occasional splash of color here and there – a poster for some old movie on the wall, ribbons tied to a bright blue fan, a couple plants by the window.

“Yes?”

The clerk’s voice is as dry as the air outside, yet cuts through the quiet of the office nonetheless, making Hana wince. She steps up to the desk, phone still in hand.

“Er – I’m a new tenant,” she starts, and barely remembers to bow her head in respect.

“A new tenant?” The woman asks, adjusting her glasses on her nose. “Your name?”

“Ah.” _Idiot, you can’t forget that._ With a bow, she chirps out, “S... a...  _Saito_ Hana.” _Nice save._

“Oh? You’re that Korean girl, aren’t you?” she mutters, leaning her elbow onto the desk she sits at.

"Ah-" Hana pales. "That's-"

The granny only stares, the most innocent and unsuspecting look ever on her face. Suddenly Hana wants to slap herself - _yes,_ they gave her a different name when they shipped her off to Japan, but it's not like the place they _arranged_ to have her stay would employ government officers or something. There probably isn't any kind of malicious intent behind this lady calling her out on being Korean. Probably.

Despite this, her movements are stiff with discomfort and guilt as she fishes into her bag for her wallet. “Yeah. I’ll grab my ID, just gimme a second…”

The clerk waves her off. “Now, now, I don’t need something like that.” As Hana glances up in surprise, she lifts herself out of her chair and hobbles into the back of her office, disappearing behind some shelves. “Give me a second, and I’ll grab your keys, missy.”

Hana shrugs before catching herself and calling back another “thank-you”. The formalities and cues are already beginning to wear her out.

Glancing around, she takes in the room around her again. There’s a few beat-up chairs and sofas atop a carpet riddled with stains, an old painting hanging on the wall opposite the window, that tall fan with the ribbons rotating idly in the corner, and another set of fans sitting atop a chunky air conditioning unit. Hana’s certain she’s never seen anything like it in person.

The whole district has just screamed “retro” from the moment she got out of the damn car. For a city historically known to be ahead of the game, Tokyo isn’t exactly the picture of modernism right now.

The granny reemerges with a thankfully-electronic keycard and hands it to Hana with a small smile.

She has to rack her brain for the words as she takes it in both her hands. “T-thank you very much. I'll be in your care from now on.”

The granny bows her head in return. “If you have any questions, don’t be shy, now. This landlady knows Tokyo better than the back of her veiny hand.”

 

ー

 

Hana’s room feels like a cardboard box to her compared to what she was accustomed to living in. If anything, it was more like the military quarters from her early days as a recruit. There’s a door in the far right corner, behind it a sink and toilet. The floor creaks when she steps on the boards and dust floats up from between the planks, motes catching the saffron light that’s pouring in through the window. Closest to the main door is another, larger sink.

It certainly made her shopping list easy to fill. Minifridge, portable burner, _something_ to stick in the window to cool off the place… A basin to wash stuff in, maybe… Bedding… At the very least, some containers to put clothes in… _clothes_ themselves…

She sighs as she scrolls back over the lengthy list in her phone’s notes. It’s a bit overwhelming. As much as she enjoys shopping, she’s not sure how she’ll fit everything she wants in this tiny little room. But it’s all she has right now.

Moving to the sink, she splashes lukewarm water on her face before tugging open the window. It’s noisy, and part of her is afraid she might break it if she manhandles it too much. There isn’t much of a breeze outside, but the room itself is like an oven, so at the very least she can get it aired out.

Finally letting herself relax a little, Hana undoes the top few buttons on her shirt and leans onto the windowsill. There isn’t much of a view. Just some busted up building across the street, with a big, chunky satellite coming out of the top and windsocks hanging off the ends of the roof. Telephone lines weave between the roofs, casting angular shadows across the empty streets below. There’s a bike rack on the edge of the road, presumably for this complex’s residents, but no parking lot.

It’s quiet, though, and she can see a good distance around the place. She likes that.

Hana stands there for a while, weight on her elbows and hands hanging out the window, until the heat gets to her again and she moves on to the next task.

 

ー

 

Despite the weather, she spends the rest of the afternoon exploring the area. Yes, it’s hot as fuck and she’s already exhausted, not to mention sleep-deprived from all the traveling she’s done, but she can’t just sit in that room all day, not when it’s this hot, not when she doesn’t have anything to sit _on_.

The landlady shows her a coin laundry place across the street, along with a 24-hour convenience store next door. She says it’s family owned and the nice _oniisan_ that always runs the counter should be a good as a place as any to start on the making-friends front. Hana obliges and stops by, picking up a few necessities and barely managing to even start a conversation with the kid behind the counter.

There isn’t much else on her street besides a small bathhouse and a porn DVD shop. She does a double take because since _when_ were those still a thing? Part of her wants to take a picture of it, though she knows she really doesn’t have anywhere to post it, so she moves on.

Moving further around the neighborhood, Hana discovers much of the same type of places, all small and family-owned. Ramen shops, karaoke bars, electronics, Chinese food, western foods, appliances, bookstores, trinkets, cafes, sushi, liquor, family restaurants… few and far between. Not quite living up to the bright, trendy, neon aesthetic other districts of Tokyo gave off, but Hanamura knows what it’s about, and if anything, is proving to be easy enough to traverse.

By five-o’-clock Hana feels like she might actually black out, so she makes her way back to the apartment complex. This time, she makes sure to commit the name and location to memory. _Utatori_ Building _._

Before she’s taken two steps up the stairwell that leads to the second level, however, the voice of the landlady stops her. Turning, Hana watches the old woman wobble across the garden that sits between the main office and the complex itself, towel and robes in hand.

“Now, now, Ms. Newcomer. Don't let me see you running off to bed without hitting the baths first.”

Hana rubs her chin. She’s so used to having a shower in her room that it'd totally slipped her mind. And despite her exhaustion, a bath would _really_ hit the spot right now, maybe even help her get the sleep she needs to so desperately catch up on.

With an awkward bow, Hana obliges.

 

ー

 

The rest of the night passes uneventfully. The landlady shows her around the bathhouse; Hana scrubs off all the grime built up from over twenty-four hours of traveling; the landlady luckily doesn’t question any of the ugly scars marring Hana's skin, and even more luckily, there's no one else around right now; they chat amiably on their way back to the apartment complex, and she’s half convinced that everything everyone always told her about Japanese keeping to themselves and not being talkative is wrong because this lady is the friendliest woman she’s met in years.

It takes effort to heave her worn-out, but at least clean, body up the set of metal stairs. Once she sinks through the door, Hana folds up her clothes and tidies up the place purely out of habit before sitting down on the futon. She folds her legs, hands clamping around her ankles as she stares into one of the corners of her small room and loses track of time.

The air has cooled, at least, now that that abysmal ball of fire has finally decided to give Hanamura a break. A nice breeze is coming in through the open window, too. Some voices from a couple streets over are all that's audible. No drills, no groaning of high-end technology, no clunking footsteps as other soldiers wandered towards their own quarters, no roommates waking up screaming in the dead of night… Just peace and quiet. Even before those times, when she lived in the city, Hana was used to traces of popular songs and the various sounds of nightlife drifting in through the window as she went to bed.

She sighs, and finally leans back, wrapping herself in the sheets. Out of habit, she reaches one of her hands out to grab her phone, its odd shape sending another pang through her chest. The screen lights up; no new messages. Obviously. It wasn’t like she had anyone, not anymore. Just the essentials – her commanding officer and a couple doctors, none of which she was allowed to call unless it was an  _absolute_ emergency. Even if she _were_ home, it wasn’t like she tended to hit up others in her division at night, not even mech pilots, despite the fact they’d been quite the clique. No, nights were reserved for locking the door and gaming until it felt like her eyeballs were gonna fall out. But not even being able to surf the web or check in on her friends’ accounts still _really_ sucks.

The thought of her friends back home feels like a knife being shoved into her gut, and she immediately regrets letting her train of thought lead her there. The mech pilots. Life before. All their stupid, good times together.

She shudders and retreats further into the blankets, discarding her phone and burying her cheek in the pillow. One of the stores had a pretty cute pillowcase – pastel pink with white polka-dots, and a matching comforter to go with. It contrasts starkly with the rest of the rather dull, unfurnished room, but that’s a problem she can handle tomorrow.

For now, making it through the night is most important. Letting the reality of her situation truly sink in, without losing her goddamn mind, is important.

Hana steadies her breathing and waits for sleep to take her.


	2. adjustment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhh, thanks for the kudos+comments!!  
> we're still in exposition here but The Lads are comin soon

There’s an ache in Hana’s gut as she’s browsing the local thrift shops for anything that’ll catch her attention. It took waking up to the stink of her own three-days-worn, sweat-through clothes to finally kick her into gear and get her out shopping. It’s either buy more or wash her current ones, the latter being something she isn’t exactly dying to do right now.

She’d ended up getting adventurous and taking the train further into Tokyo – not too many stops away from Hanamura, though, just far enough so that she’s pushing her comfort zone a little – and ends up in a mall above the station. She scrolls through her phone as she browses the aisles, tapping the toe of her shoe on the ground. Photos that she’s snapped while exploring town the past three days flip by beneath her touch. The motion is more of a nervous tic than anything else.

The store is rather crowded despite it being eleven in the morning on a weekday, she thinks as she glances around, peeking her eyes over the racks filling the small space. No one’s paying her any mind. They’re going about their business, she’s going about hers. Quietly. Mundane. She’s… not used to it.

Ducking her head back down, she drums on the back of her phone, noting she needs to get a case for it, and rummages through a set of hangers. A lot of the stuff here can probably make a cute outfit, she thinks, but she’s so distracted that she can’t really put together a good one in her mind right now.

She’d fought a shit ton of omnics. Enough that plowing through them with her mech was more like a game to her than anything else. Responded to so many attacks on cities that the chaos, the destruction, the sirens, she became desensitized to it all, it was just... _normal._

Now, so isolated from it, it’s hellbent on coming back and haunting her. Where all her missions had been a blur when she was still in service, they all stand out to her now in the _terror_ that came with holding off a super-intelligent robot-ocean-monster, terror she’d either been too caught up in the moment to feel at the time or had just straight up repressed. All of it comes rushing back to her as she remembers.

Unfortunately, that train of thought can never just _stay_ a train of thought. Just dipping her feet in to test the waters leads to her getting tugged out to sea by the rip-current and there’s barely anything she can do to stop it besides struggle. With the floodgates open, memories return in vivid detail.

One incident had been in a store like this. Hana was shopping with a couple friends. They weren’t military friends (which meant it was early on in her career – the more decorated she became the more she retreated into her own circle, the less time she had…) No, they were just normal folks, she’d met them online or something… great people, her go-to shopping group at the time. Vaguely, she remembers that they’d set a goal to visit every mall in Busan together. Some joke one of them had come up with while sitting, laughing in some food court in some shopping center that’s probably been blasted off the face of the earth by now.

They never got to hit up every mall in Busan. It’d been a failed conquest because they'd died that day. Three of them at least, three of four. The one that’d survived was so fucking traumatized that he'd ended up going overseas to recuperate with some of his extended family... not all that unlike Hana’s situation, really.

They’d been in a quaint little shop like this, some American chain, Hana can’t remember the name, only that her arms had been full of shit she was pumped to try on. Everything from sundresses to baggy pants. They were all laughing, offering up clothes far too small to their ripped, six-foot-one friend. Hana strayed from the group to go pick out a white ruffle-top, hanging up too high on the wall for her to reach. She’d made some teasing comment about her short height, drawing more laughs from the others, then had whined at the six-foot-one guy to come grab it for her.

He’d taken four steps, maybe. She had been smiling, mouth half-open in a giggle.

Then the ceiling had exploded. Rubble and dust went everywhere, coating every article of cheap clothing in the store and filling Hana’s lungs. She’d doubled over, coughing and hacking, stumbling back into the rack behind her. More explosions and quakes rocked the building as she recovered, gagging, pulling up her jacket over her mouth.

When her vision, and the dust, had cleared enough for her to assess things, her heart near stopped. Two huge chunks of concrete lay where her friends had been standing just moments ago.  A few feet past that, the floor, walls, _everything_ was gone, sunlight was leaking through clouds of dust. Her eyes made out the familiar shape of an omnic, standing three times as high as the two-story mall they were in. From somewhere within it came a deep groaning noise, and then it picked up its leg again, triggering another string of quakes throughout the mall.

Hana braced herself as instinct took over. Mech. She had to get to safety and call her mech. Prevent any more damage. Now. Now. Now. Why hadn’t she gotten an alert? Sure, she wasn’t in the first division at this point, not yet, but _fuck…_ Now that she thinks back, though, the mall had been near the shoreline, hadn’t it…? Even then there should’ve been alarms going off far before it reached land. She’d later find out that the omnic had injected a virus into the national defense system and taken down everything from radars to alarm systems to seismographs.

Far after she’d escaped the unstable building and called her commanding officer, she would realize she’d left six-foot-one, who’d been thrown into a rack of clothes, in the store. It was even later when she finally learned he’d lived. At the time, the event had done nothing but fuel her determination to fight off the omnics.

Now, reliving the experience, guilt and sorrow take the form of intense nausea instead and Hana wavers on her feet. Her eyes widen as she stares up at the ceiling, waiting for it to explode like it did that time. Her phone clatters to the ground somewhere, and soon she falls after it, breath hitching, the soft lights around her suddenly becoming way too intense.

She pinches her eyes shut and tries to even out her breathing, reminding her godawful brain that she’s not in Korea and there’s no giant omnic out to get her. When she opens them again there’s people standing around her, gazing down, their brows knit together in worry. Women, mostly older women, muttering this and that, she can’t understand it at the moment.

Hana reaches around for her phone, feeling a wave of relief when her fingers close around its edges. She stands, laughs, shrugs, says something about tripping and being clumsy, then makes for the door.

It doesn’t take long to find the rooftop access stairwell, and once she feels the wind on her sweaty skin she relaxes. She drinks in the sight of the horizon. No gigantic killer robots to be found – awesome. Hana slumps to the ground against a wall and stares up at the clouds, willing her heart to slow down. Hours until the growling of her stomach urges her to get up again.

At the end of the day, she heads home with a bag full of a nice assortment of clothes, a phone case, and some food in her stomach.

It’s progress.

 

―

 

It’s ten o’clock sharp, now five days after Hana’s arrival. She’s picked up a good amount of stuff out at the local stores by now, managed to furnish her room, and has done enough general exploring to put some images and meanings behind the generic mess of stripes and names her maps app displays to her. The sun is already hard at work, and the streets glisten beneath it like the grate of a grill. Hana stands in the middle of one of these streets, hands in the pockets of her shorts. They’re white, fall to the mid-thigh; beneath them she’s wearing thinner, black shorts that reach to just above her knee. Not because she cares about some pervy old man getting his jollies from glimpsing her upper thighs on the train or something, no… but it was either bike shorts or bandages to cover the mess of jagged, discolored lines on her skin there, and she figured the former would stand out a lot less.

Towering before her is a structure that stands out like a beacon. It’s blocky and white, modern compared to the older building around it that are made up of more earthy hues. Hanging over the entrance in big, fat letters is “16 BIT HERO ゲーム　センター”.

It was completely accidental, that she wandered into this end of town, but somehow, she’s found a god damn arcade. Part of her is yelling to ignore it, not delve into that again, or at least not yet. She doesn’t want to end up overdoing it, and she _knows_ games will only remind her of the past. Yet…

It’s hot as balls, and she’s already starting to sweat through her shirt again despite only having been outside for an hour. She can’t use any excuse like she hasn’t eaten, either, because the landlady pulled her aside on her way out this morning to serve her breakfast.

Hana sighs. What’s the worst that could happen? She cools off, and games for a couple hours to get her mind off everything else. That’s what would happen.

Holding her chin high, she steps inside.

 

―

 

Red. The arcade is a clash of the pale-blue light coming off the many machines inside and the walls all around them. Rectangular fixtures coat the place with soft, crimson hues. There’s only a few people scattered throughout – most of them are what seem to be middle and high-school aged kids, all crouched over some console with their friends. She eyes them as she passes through, expecting stares, but to her own surprise she doesn’t get any. Everyone’s way too enthralled by the games they’re playing to care about some plain-looking girl strolling through the arcade. _Talk about overthinking,_ she thinks.

Hana sits at an empty table near the back for a little while, tapping her fingers on the smooth surface and assessing the arcade’s interior, taking a mental inventory of all its different games. Her body reacts to all the familiar stimulants around it, making her fingers itch for the buttons of a controller and her eyes draw towards the bright screens. She waits, taps her foot. Then, after some half an hour or so, she stands and just walks up to the closest machine.

 _Lost Viking 2._ Hana vaguely remembers playing it in one of the arcades back in Busan, way back before she even got into more hardcore and time-consuming online stuff. Stiffly, she places herself in the cushion as if she’s breaking some kind of rule of the establishment. The machine takes yen coins – truly retro, most nowadays accepted cards or crypto or something of the like. Rummaging through the pouch she bought yesterday, she fetches out a handful of coins she really can’t tell the difference between, and pops some in until the console releases its lock.

It’s _too_ easy to fall back into the rhythm of things.

Hana’s score is shitty at first (if it was her younger self who was the judge, well, it’d be more like super-ultra-extreme-shit-tier because _damn_ , she doesn’t even come _close_ to making the top ten) and she’s not too surprised by it. It’s been forever, after all. There hadn’t been a lot of time for leisure gaming like this during her last year in the military, and after that… the nurses either straight up ignored her when she asked if she could get a handheld, or went on some long spiel about how it would be bad for her recovery. Occasionally the MEKA pilots would get together on a free day and head over to a café with some popular game in mind, but that-

She stops the thought there and pours all of her focus into _Viking._ Now, she _really_ just feels like losing herself and topping all the scoreboards in the arcade. It’d be fun, it’d be challenging (well, maybe not, considering how vacant the place is), and would probably give her some peace of fucking mind.

 

―

 

It’s eight o’clock when Hana finally tears her eyes away from the bright glow of a screen. The action is accompanied with a heavy sigh. She brings her arms up over her head, stretching her aching fingers. Various bones click and snap; there’s a dull pain around where the worst of her injuries from two years ago were.

She’d managed to top the leaderboard in _Viking_ , knocking off some _G-N-J_ person who had a weirdly higher score than everyone below them. After that, she’d moved to a _Vivi’s Adventure_ machine and put in a pretty impressive time on a full playthrough, but it wasn’t enough to make the top ten. Switching from an intense multi-directional shooter to a silly, cute platformer is a hard jump to make.

After that, Hana had grabbed a few snacks from some nearby vending machines and sat back down at her bench. A little more traffic reached the arcade at this point. The biggest crowds gathered around _Fighters of the Storm_ and its sequel. It had to be big here; the arcade was chock full of those machines.

Following this, Hana felt a bit gutsy, so she made her way to the front of the arcade and cleaned out half of a _UFO Kuubo_ machine. _That_ had certainly drawn some gazes. But just as whispers were starting to spread, she’d stopped, carrying the load of pachimari she’d emptied out back up to one of the reception desks and handing them over after assuring the employee that it was perfectly fine, she didn’t mind.

Following this Hana had, seeing the glances being tossed in her direction, retreated to the fourth floor of the arcade and tucked herself in a corner, where there were a bunch of open _Fighters_ machines. Once she’d gotten into that, time had _really_ started slipping away. Next thing she knew, it was eight, she was exhausted, and her legs were sticking to the cushion she’d sat in.

Hana stands, cringing as her skin peels off of the leather. She yawns, rubs at her eyes, then picks up the can of soda she’d grabbed god-knows-how-long ago along with the one pachimari plush she’d decided to give a home to. Uncharacteristically quiet, she exits out one of the side doors and finds her way back onto the road leading to her apartment.

Light is just barely clinging to the sky as she walks home, just slightly brighter than the dark silhouettes of the buildings and telephone poles lining the streets around her. Some of the heat has lifted, and although the humidity persists, the fresh air feels good on her clammy skin after being cooped up inside the cold, stale arcade for so long.

There’s not a lot on her mind as she stares up at the landscape around her. It’s strange, yet in some ways vaguely familiar to what she’s used to. Unlike home, however, there’s no risk of a giant omnic bursting out of the sea and disrupting the peace that hangs over this city – at least, she hopes that’s the case. Distance from home and distance from the problems home brought for her, yet somehow she feels hollow without them there because they were the things that defined her for so long. Who was she now except some cheeky brown-haired girl that hung out at the arcade?

Standing at the gate of the complex, Hana takes one last surveying look over the street she’s on – the vending machines on the other side of the road, the mirror attached to a telephone pole on the corner, the beacon-like convenience store, the too-narrow alley between two tightly-packed houses where she’d seen cats prowling that morning. She doesn’t really think anything of it, and slips through the gate, ready to conk out.

 

―

 

The next day is spent in a similar fashion, as is the one after that. In the back of her mind, Hana is aware that there are much better ways she could be spending her time. But going out and exploring and partying or whatever else… She’d have to actually learn about the train system, do research on the best places, put herself _out_ there, et cetera, et cetera… all the things she loved doing at some point in the past but has little motivation to now. It’s like the past few years have just sucked all the energy from her.

Well, that and at the end of the day she’d likely end up lugging six or more bags atop her small frame all the way back to her apartment in the blazing heat, and that wasn’t really something Hana was up to try any time soon. She may’ve changed, but her shopping habits haven’t.

So she goes to the arcade. It’s a bit of a walk from her place, and uphill at that, but it’s not bad, and the promise of an air-conditioned building full of games is enough to keep her feet moving.

Strolling in through the front doors, she makes a beeline for the back of the place and plops down at a _Vivi’s_ machine. It’s not her favorite game, but it’s good for the mornings and doesn’t require a lot of energy to play. She pulls her legs up on the cushion, crossing them, and stretches her back before hunching forwards to get a better look at the screen.

In the next two hours, the place fills up some. Hana doesn’t really notice until she gets a game-over and leans back. There’s the usual thirty or so kids, and then some. A couple of them are chatting at a lunch table, bunched up, leaning forwards onto their elbows. She watches them idly for a bit before getting up and sauntering over to a vending machine.

As she picks out enough coins from her purse for a bottle of vegetable juice, Hana listens in on the kids’ conversation.

 _“_ Are you serious? _That_ high?”

“I’m serious, look for yourself! It wasn’t like there last weekend, either. But no one I’ve talked to said they did it.”

“Yeah, and everyone usually uses the consoles on the first floor, anyways. The serious people, at least.”

She turns halfway around as she pulls the bottle from the bottom of the machine and cracks the lid open, eyes trained on the tile floor.

“What’d you say the initials were again? You’re saying it wasn’t Genji?”

“Nope, they were different. What was it? Uhh, ‘ _D-V-A.’”_

Hana freezes mid-swig. _Shit. Shit!_ She’d entered it completely from force of habit, hadn’t even thought about it at the time. The words of her commanding officer echo in her head...

 

 

_“No matter what, though, you are not permitted to build up your online presence again. The public can’t find out D.Va is still alive. You’re just Song now. Or... whatever name it was we put on your card.”_

_“Ugh… But-“_

_“_ And _we don’t want you playing any games at all, either. Not that I think you’re dying to play them again, anyways, considering what the doctors told me about the last time you got your hands on one, but I just want to make this as clear as possible to you, Song.”_

_“What the hell… Why can’t I just do it under a different username? No one will know.”_

_“That’s what you think, but you might be underestimating your fans. Gain too much of a following and people might notice similarities in how you play, or whatever. That’s a risk that shouldn’t be taken. Law_ low. _For your own sake._ ”

_“…Fine, whatever. No ‘D.Va’, no gaming. I’ll just sit around and be a depressed piece of shit all day.”_

_“Song, that_ isn’t _what I’m saying-“_

_“It’s okay, it’s okay. You’re right. I don’t think I could get back into hardcore gaming even if I wanted to…”_

 

“’ _D-V-A?”'_

The kids repeating her old call-name draw her out of daze and her grip around the bottle tightens. _Man, I really screwed the pooch, didn’t I? Game over, they’re gonna figure it out…_

“Yeah…”

“Is that supposed to mean something? Doesn't sound like a normal name.”

 _Huh?_ Hana glances up, finally taking a look at the group. Their faces are all pinched up in confusion.

There's no recognition, whatsoever. She doesn't know whether to feel insulted, relieved, or _old_.

She’s still tense, but she starts to realize then that if she was _going_ to be recognized by a fan here, she would have been already. Even that’s unlikely, because she’d always been caked up with makeup when she streamed and now all she’s wearing are the bare essentials from some convenience store. Her hair is different too, longer and more frizzed from the heat. It’d been two years since she last appeared on camera. She looks a little different, physically, too – she doesn’t make the same expressions she used to, has what’s probably permanent puffy bags under her eyes, a thinner frame, a few inches taller (like that amounts to anything though, she’s still short), she probably even _carries_ herself differently because of the injuries. Even if someone was a diehard fan, the kind that prints out pictures and plasters them to their walls or writes fucking fan-fiction or some shit like that, calling her out on the street and claiming she’s the same Korean pilot that died two years ago would be a _huge_ reach.

Stick her actual call-name to her person, though, and it’s a different story. Someone might try connecting the dots.

But given the total lack of recognition by those that’ve noticed her chart-topping in the past 24 hours, and the fact that in every conversation about this mysterious newcomer that she’s listened in on they’ve never once mentioned _that_ D.Va, the famous streamer from South Korea’s MEKA program... Maybe it's safe to assume she hasn’t fucked up as royally as she thinks.

“Hey, I think I saw the same initials on another console down here. _Vikings,_ maybe.”

They keep chattering; Hana downs the rest of her juice and tosses the bottle in a recycling bin before heading out one of the side-exits to get some fresh air.


	3. encounters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay SO UHHH blizzard actually released. a dva short. and its actually exactly what i dreamed itd be. that caught me WILD off-guard LMAO!! but it's awesome bc a lot of it fits what I was planning for this fic anyway? so hopefully despite there now being a bunch of new canon dva lore it shouldn't affect my initial plans for this too much

Two days and four more leaderboard placements later, there’s a little bit more of a buzz around the arcade, and Hana can’t say she doesn’t like it. She really had been expecting a game center in a district of _Tokyo_ – however far from downtown it was – to be frequented by a lot more people, especially in summer. But the city probably has a ton of other arcades around, and for some reason Hanamura doesn’t really give off the hot-and-trendy vibe that the arcade-going crowd would flock to. It’s old-fashioned and almost sleepy.

She’s sitting by a group of junior high students at a corner table, playing a brainless mobile game with one hand and sipping a soda from the other, when something really catches her attention.

“Hey… They topped Genji in a _Vikings_ machine _and_ a _Siege_ machine.”

“I saw… that’s almost unheard of.”

“He’s been out of town for a while, though, and some of his scores here are pretty old too. So maybe they’re not as good as we think.”

“But, still…”

“Hey, hey, when’s Genji coming back? He’s gonna get beat at this rate.”

“Don’t say that. Just because someone got lucky, it doesn’t mean they can beat _all_ his scores. This is _Genji_ we’re talking about.”

“You’re right…”

Hana furrows her brow. Genji? Why’s it such a big deal that she knocked whoever this was out of first place?  It isn’t her first time hearing the name around here, either.

Wait… setting aside her phone, Hana spells out the name in her mind, then mentally writes it out in Korean – then goes to the roman alphabet, since the initials in the games were all in that… Genji, G-E-N-J-I. With just the consonants, _GNJ_.

Her eyes widen. No way – _that’s_ the guy that’s on top of all the charts? Sure, it’s a small arcade, but he must be some kind of prodigy to do that… or just a nerdy kid with a lot of time on his hands. What had those students said, just now…? That he’s been out of town for a while?

Interesting.

Hana begins drumming her fingers on the table in excitement, until the sugar in the soda gets to her and she bounces back up, going right for the staircase.

 

―

 

When she next steps outside, it’s almost 11PM. In her defense, she hadn’t been checking her phone for the time or anything, and, as it always did, it just slipped away. The traffic in the game center had only increased as the night grew, and even the fourth floor had been filled with voices, music, and sound-effects when she’d finally gotten up and left. She makes a mental note to ask someone what their hours are the next time she’s in.

Against her own will, Hana has really grown to like the place.

She stretches beneath one of the streetlights outside the arcade, and her body crunches and crackles in response to the movement. She might be at risk of flushing her decent physical shape down the toilet, staying at an arcade sunup to sundown, but she can’t really bring herself to care that much – it’s not like she needs it anymore.

Her stomach roars loudly now that the atmosphere is quiet enough that its cries will be heard, and Hana groans in response. Her eyes catch on that big-ass murloc looming over the street corner; the harsh artificial lights around it make it appear even scarier, like it’s about to pluck Hana off the street and drop her into its steamy bowl of ramen. Its bulging eyes stare down at her; the yellow is worn and weathered here and there.

The thought of ramen makes her stomach rumble again, and she mutters a “shut up” before directing her gaze at the shop’s entrance. It’s open, despite the hour. Muffled voices of men can be heard from inside – the only noise on the block at this hour, aside from the hum of electricity and the occasional bark of a dog.

Eyes wide with curiosity, Hana wanders beneath the curtains. A speaker somewhere lets out a friendly greeting as she passes through the threshold and onto the wood floorboards.

There’s some college-aged kid working the kitchen, and he welcomes her over his shoulder as she stands in the doorway. Some brightly-colored menus clinging to the wall to her right catch her attention, and she mulls over the alphabet that still feels weird and uncomfortable to her before deciding on the “Most Delicious in the World!!” 800-yen bowl. A cute little pepper indicates that it’s a spicy dish.

Hana relays her order to the cook and takes a seat at the bar beside the door. On the other end of the long table, three men probably in their early thirties are seated, chattering idly. Their bowls are all empty, but the glasses of beer in their hands definitely aren’t. Their manner of speaking itself is so lazy and casual that Hana has a hard time understanding any of it, and she can’t tell if it’s just the way they talk or the alcohol that’s hindering their annunciation.

The cook brings out her food, and it’s fucking _delicious_. A perfect blend of salty and spicy. Why had she never come here before?!

As Hana slurps it down, she again tries to listen in on the boisterous group of older men. Bits and pieces of their conversation bleed through, slowly but surely. Something about money, reporting to their boss… collecting money, maybe… Hitting a club downtown later in the night… complaining that Hanamura doesn’t have enough night life… that that was their boss’s fault, something about being too traditional…

Hana’s slurping slows. As more and more of their conversation pieces itself together, the urge to take a proper look at the men gets stronger. After her last bite of ramen, she flicks her gaze off to her right briefly, much too discreetly for a bunch of drunk guys to notice. Two of them are wearing suits, albeit they’re a little wrinkled and in need of a wash… not like she can talk. The third, closest to her, had shed his blazer, so now he’s just got a white dress shirt on beneath it. Too old-fashioned to be any ordinary person. The unease in her stomach grows stronger. Sweat from the unrelenting heat causes the upper half of his shirt to stick to his back, and if Hana squints she can _swear_ there’s swirling lines of black and blue beneath the fabric. They’re _just barely_ defined enough for her to determine those are _tattoos_ , not just shadows fuzzy in the shop’s dim lighting.

Before they notice her staring, she turns back to her bowl. A little anxious, now, she pulls out her phone and fiddles around with it as her mind works at a hundred miles per hour. What the hell? _Yakuza?_ Here? _Why?_ _I mean, sure, it’s Tokyo… but they’d been on the decline for decades now, right?_ Yet, still, Hana remembers hearing about them in the short prep session she had before flying in. A few groups are still at large, apparently, with an entire clan still lurking around in Kanto and a few smaller ones in Kansai. Now that she thinks about it… she remembers them saying that the big Kanto clan was centered not far from where she was designated to live. Somehow, it’d slipped her mind… _giant intelligent robots set on eradicating human civilization_ was always a bigger threat in her mind than some old traditional Japanese gangs. But here she is, sitting next to three yakuza that are _clearly, very_ at-home in this ramen shop. Shit, maybe _that’s_ the reason the place is even open this late at all, she thinks.

Hana, unusual as it is, makes the _right_ decision and gathers her stuff to leave. She moves to give the waiter, owner, goon, whoever the genius cooking the ramen is an extra tip before remembering they don’t do that here, and instead makes herself scarce. She’s not really scared per say – there were much, much worse things she’s faced than a couple gangsters – but she’s also exposed right now and is conscious of that. No mech, no squad, no one to call, not even her favorite pistol at her side. Just a clunky phone, her cute bunny-print bag, and her attitude. _Yikes._

It’s overcast outside, and clouds obscure the moon that usually shines down on Hanamura in an attempt to match its counterpart’s strength. Hana gives the sky a wary glance before getting on her way.

Fortunately, the only footsteps that echo through the streets are her own, even once the ramen restaurant is out of sight. At this point most stores have closed up shop, and no one else is out. She passes a convenience store that’s lit up, with a few high schoolers hanging out around it, but that’s about all there is. Not wanting to lose her way, she pulls out her phone and flicks in her destination on her maps app – even though she’s taken the route a few times now, it looks a bit different at night, so it can’t hurt to have a second opinion on the more confusing streets…

Lazily scrolling through her phone to find a song to listen to as she walks, she turns into a more compact road, then, noticing a potential shortcut, swerves into an alley between two buildings, holding her breath as she squeezes between the assortment of trash bags and boxes laying within.

Then she spots them – five or six tall, burly silhouettes lingering just a few feet ahead. Too grown to be a group of kids up to no good at this time of night.

 _Great._ She slows, tenses, gets ready to bolt back the way she came. But it’s too late – they’re all turning towards her now, having heard her sneakers scuffing against the pavement. Between their sets of legs, most of which are wearing pants _way_ too warm for this weather, she sees someone beyond them peel himself off the pavement and scurry away.

“Is there a problem?” asks the one at the front.

Hana sighs, turning her attention to him. _Man, I just want to go home and sleep. Is that too much to ask?_

This guy looks like a fucking _ninja._ Like he just jumped straight out of a video game. There’s some traditional blue robe, then a bunch of belts and padding and equipment strapped on top of that, to his arms, his shoulders, his waist – and his _feet_ … looks like some cross between sandals and bird talons.

His arms are crossed, and beneath his long, dark bangs lies a face made up of angles sharper than a knife. She stands up straighter as she realizes he’s throwing a nasty glare her way. Lined up behind him are four or five men in much different garb – outdated suits and dress pants, just like…

Just like… the yakuza she’d seen in the restaurant.

Yeah, she’s sure of it. Their shirts are partially unbuttoned and…

Feeling sweat on her brow, Hana chuckles and flips her phone around in her hand. “Can I help you boys?”

A stiff silence ensues.

Hana looks around, up at the walls around her and the darkened windows lining them. “Whoops, is this private property? My bad, my bad. I’ll go around…”

“Who _are_ you?”

The words are venomous, dripping with suspicion and hostility and Hana’s head snaps back to the man at the front, Ninja Dude. She hadn’t thought it was possible for his glare to get any more intense, but it had, and a shiver runs up her spine. Defensively, she brings her hands up in front of her.

“Hey, man, listen. I don’t know what you-“

“You’re not from around here,” he continues, poking his chin up high and taking a step forwards. Hana holds her ground, despite her uneasiness. “and you’ve been frequenting our turf. The others are convinced you’re a citizen, but I’m not so sure.”

Hana’s brow knits together as she tries to work through his weird sentences. _Citizen_ …?

 _Oh –_ maybe this was about… but, no, no one should know she’s from Korea even if they did have ties to the yakuza… right? She hadn’t told anyone since she arrived here, no one besides the landlady, and had flown through an airport in Singapore, had pretty much removed everything distinctly Korean from her belongings, like stickers and the sort.

“…Sorry to say, ninja guy, but I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she replies, careful to annunciate each word properly, not wanting any accent to leak through.

“If you are a citizen, where are you from?” he pries, taking another step closer, head tilting as he sizes her up. Hana has a hard time making an estimate on his age – he could be anywhere between twenty-five and forty, depend on how stressful his life was.

“…I moved in from… Nagoya, around a week ago,” she tries, arms crossing. “I don’t know about anyone’s _turf_ , either, I’ve just been going to the arcade down the street to pass the time, and – “ she pauses, anger flaring up in her – “- and whose business is it, anyway? Talk about rude.”

Surprising her, the man chuckles. It’s an incredibly evil-sounding chuckle, like some movie villain. “Citizen or not, it seems you have a lot to learn.” He rounds her right, lips curving back into a frown. “Tell me your name.”

Hana bites her tongue, not sure whether to give this asshole the pleasure of knowing her name or to spit in his face. Given how intimidating the goons behind him are, she goes with the first option, racking her brain again for the one they’d assigned her in coming to Japan.

“… _Saito_ ,” she’s only said it a few times, it still feels weird, “…Saito Hana.”

The man stares contemplatively at her, and the longer she holds his gaze the more she wants to shove him out of the way and go home.

Then there’s a grip on her arm and a strong tug that knocks her off balance – she lets out a yelp and her body immediately snaps into fighting-mode, but then her back is against the wall and his forearm is planted against her neck, keeping her in place. She kicks out, manages to nab him in the shin (it doesn’t do much, she realizes, not just because she’s wearing plain old tennis-shoes, but he’s got those ridiculous shin-guards on too) and he immediately retaliates by tightening the pressure on her neck. Somewhere in the midst of all this, her phone falls to the ground. The clattering of the device against the pavement makes her cringe more than the adult man up in her face does.

“Is that your real name? _Saito_?” Despite his accusing tone, he seems genuinely curious, like a cat with a shitty attitude. Hana continues to struggle.

A moment later, he’s fished something out of her pocket and she’s _really_ pissed now. Huffing, he holds something up – her ID. She curses herself for carrying around the physical copy of it.

“ _Song_ Hana…” He glances at her again. “Oh. Korean, then.”

She coughs, then forces out a, “ _What of it?_ ”

The man sniffs, then tosses the card away and backs off. Hana immediately doubles over, trying to fill her poor lungs back up with air.

“Well, that should be sufficient for now,” he mutters, stroking his chin. “Don’t worry yourself. I’m only taking inventory.” Part of Hana really wants to, at the very least, spit on his stupid sandals, but her breathing is still all fucked up and…

“Let’s move on, boys. There’s a long night ahead of us.” Finally, there’s some semblance of joy in the man’s tone – only because he’s talking about bringing misery upon more people, apparently.

“Yes, sir!” The other men grunt all in unison, bowing to the ninja guy before stalking off down the alley.

Hana waits, waits until she can no longer hear their footsteps, a mix of fear and fury brewing in her gut. Did she just get mugged? Sign up for a human trafficking program, maybe? What the hell? Should she be watching her back for kidnappers, from now on?

Deciding to trust how disinterested the man in charge had been, and how he had regarded her like she was an ant or something, Hana relaxes. After wiping her dirty palms off on her pants, she reaches for her phone and ID and peels herself off the pavement.  The light at the end of the alley flickers, but otherwise, the city is unaware of what just transpired.

Feeling like a rotten piece of fruit, Hana makes her way back to her neighborhood and calls it a night.

 

 

―

 

 

She’s not feeling too great the next day, and she wants to pin it on the heat or her whacked-up eating schedule or medications or her general lack of sleep but deep down she knows the main cause of her discomfort is the encounter from last night. Her skin prickles as she walks past the same alley, dark eyes scan the nearby buildings and rooftops… but nothing is amiss, and people are out and about their daily business.

Hana stays slumped over a machine until her eyelids start to droop and her stomach starts loudly protesting. After a few more games she drags herself into the snack area. There’s not too many people around – when she checks her phone she sees why. 14:58 already, way past lunch hour. Huh. Funny how time just slips on by.

She feels a lot more ethereal as she wanders up to the snack counter itself for a change. Usually she just dumps money into the vending machines, but she’s craving a different kind of junk food today for a change.

The guy there is probably in his late teens, and is deeply engrossed in some handheld when Hana approaches. His gaze doesn’t rise. She reaches the counter. Still, nothing. She leans one elbow onto the counter, lazily, peeking over his shoulder, eyes moving between him and the screen of his game. It’s some rpg, figures.

She’s not used to this. Back in Busan anyone at any arcade she went to would perk up like a bunny when they even caught a glimpse of her. She’d flirted with guys like this, working the snack areas or whatever, and they’d gobble it up, dumping all their attention on her.

But no, nothing. It’s not that she doesn’t _dislike_ it, she’s just not used to it, and it’s weird.

“Hi,” she tries, leaning her chin into one of her palms.

The kid jolts and swivels his chair around to face her. “Ah… sorry. What’s up?”

Hana’s eyebrows raise. What’s _up?_ She wants food. Was he actually an employee or not? His outfit makes him look like one. I mean, who else wears visors nowadays?

She points her gaze at the menu over his head, glowing a soft teal with the lettering glowing a brighter cyan color. Stuff like fries, strawberry smoothies, even pizza. American stuff. She could go for pizza. Damn, when was the last time she _had_ pizza?

He follows her look. “Oh. You want me to heat something up?”

“Ye-ah,” deadpans Hana, standing up again. “You still taking orders?”

He hums. “I mean, we close at three, technically. Reopen at nine. But I can throw something in, I guess.”

“Cool,” mutters Hana, handing over a 500-yen coin. “Then, a slice of pizza.”

The employee sighs and mutters something under his breath. If it was in her native language she might’ve been able to catch it. He then takes the money and disappears behind a door. Her lips twist this way and that before she decides to find herself a seat.

Two tables in the front have been pushed together; crowded around it is a group of five or six teens, talking loudly to each other as they play some card game Hana can’t quite remember the name of at the moment. She shies away from them, directing herself towards the back of the arcade instead. Four of the five tables are empty. The far right is occupied by two kids. One of them is sitting on the table, head in his arms, the other is kneeling atop the bench beside him, patting his back. It’s not until Hana sits down two tables away and starts fidgeting with her phone that she realizes the boy is crying.

She sits there, feeling awkward now as the boy sobs his guts out and the older girl tries to soothe him. Even in the loud ambience consisting of a dozen different games’ background music and the shouting card-game kids across from them his wailing is audible, too much so. Some stupid part of Hana wants to go ask what’s wrong.

She faces that fact head on. If this was home, she would have. She wouldn’t have even hesitated. She’d ask what was wrong and do whatever she could to cheer the kid up because arcades were places for fun and competition, not tears. It was one of those things she honestly wasn’t sure if she did because she wanted to, or she did because she was expected to. Like, a celeb thing. It always _seemed_ natural. But now that she didn’t have “D.Va” hanging over her head like a bright, noisy cloud, she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t really sure of anything anymore.

But she’s about to get up and ask, anyway, if only to get her mind off the heavier stuff, when the social-butterfly snack counter worker steps out from the back, a nice greasy slice of pizza held out before him. His eyes search the crowd for Hana, slowly and lazily, and at first she thinks it’s on purpose and gets a little ticked – then reminds herself for the umpteenth time this day that she’s not the girl plastered all over the nightly news and trending at the top of social media feeds anymore.

With a slanted frown, she walks up and takes the flimsy paper plate from the kid. He gives the smallest bow ever before moving to pack up his supplies and head out for the day.

“Thanks, kid,” she says, and leaves it at that, turning to head back to her table.

She passes the two – siblings? They look like it – as she walks. The boy is at least walking now, and the girl is gazing worriedly down at him. Her eyes flick to Hana curiously for only a second before they pass each other.

The pizza is good, and it holds her off until she leaves the arcade for the night. She pointedly avoids Rikimaru’s and by the time she reaches her door, her legs are burning from how fast she’d walked.

 

 

―

 

 

The next day, she runs into the siblings again.

She doesn’t realize it at first. She’s, as always, sitting at a console, but she’d gotten a little confident today and ventured down to the first floor. She’s not really sure _why._ Her brain was just telling her she needed to be around more people today.

It ends up being a mistake. Everyone is rowdy. There’s a dance game set up nearby that’s drawn a ton of people in, older and younger, and they’re all lined up, cheering and whatnot. It’s messing with her concentration. More than it should. Some part of her has the urge to get up and join them, but it’s not nearly strong enough to override her conscious aversion to drawing any kind of attention to herself.

Before she realizes it, she’s paused her game and is gazing over at the scene, drawn to the flashing colors and combos projected onto the wall like a moth to a lamp. She’s so distracted she doesn’t notice that someone sits down at the machine next to her until they start talking.

“Sis, can we try that game today?”

“No, Taka. Stop asking.”

Hana glances absently from of the corner of her eye. The two kids from yesterday.

The boy, about the age you’d expect a kid bawling their eyes out in a public place like an arcade likely for some silly thing like having to give up a machine for someone else’s turn, is leaning against the side of the large Taiko machine next to Hana’s own _Vampires VS Worgen III_ set, a pout on his face. The girl actually sitting at the machine is wearing a navy-blue junior high uniform (god, they still _have_ those here, Hana thinks incredulously) and has a frustrated pout of her own. Her hair is bleached blonde and falls just below her shoulders. Strangely, though, the roots have grown out at least two centimeters, deep black. She has a pout on her face, too, although hers looks a little more like a frustrated grimace than a sad, droopy frown. But they look similar enough to be siblings, definitely.

“But you’re _so_ good at that one,” whines the boy.

“”It doesn’t matter, just ignore it,” replies the sister, fiddling with the buttons on the console.

Hana’s moment of observance ends and soon she blocks everything out again, going back to her game.

The dance game party gets more intense. Cheers and song erupt, and it gets to the point where Hana considers just going back upstairs. Just as soon as she finishes this level. She’s gotta beat that GNJ guy off the top of this game.

Her concentration wanes again as some figures break off from the crowd and meander over towards her machine. Hana almost thinks they’re approaching her with those snotty looks on their faces until they move right past her like she’s not even there.

Then they start heckling the two kids to her left, the ones she’d totally forgotten about by this point.

“Sakko, you’re back already!” says one of the boys. He’s gotta be either in late high school or graduated – either way, way too old to be leering down at a middle-schooler the way he is. “Ya cut class again?”

The girl only shrinks back, one arm protectively moving from the buttons to guard her brother. “…Did you want this game? I can move…”

“Saw you lookin’ over there. You wanted in?” says another junior high boy, his hair cut close to his head, dyed a spiky, bright, clown-wig red. “Dance Ultra’s your fave, isn’t it?”

The tone they’re using rubs Hana the wrong way. Aggressive. Taunting. Provocative. The group of five or six unfortunately has _both_ the machines surrounded, though, despite them pretending like she’s not there, and she doesn’t want to interrupt them by standing up. Not like there’s even _room_ too – they’re practically leaning over her to glower down at the junior high girl, and one of their shoulder-bags is brushing against Hana’s side.

Weird. She’s getting bad vibes, but she sits still and fiddles around on the game’s menu screen, idling.

“What, not so talkative today?” Taunts another. This kid’s in high school, she thinks, wearing glasses and a t-shirt with a hentai girl on it. His grin is a weird shape, like a crescent moon, and he giggles.

“If you don’t wanna talk to us, I think there’s other things we can have that mouth doing,” says another before the whole gang erupts with boyish laughter.

 _Ugh. I really should have gone upstairs,_ thinks Hana, suppressing a disgusted groan.

“Come on, we’ll let you play!” croons the first guy. “It’ll make up for what we said to you yesterday.”

He’s faking a sincere tone, all of a sudden, and from the corner of her eye Hana watches with a dull sense of fear in her stomach as a hand reaches out to pat the girl on the head. The girl winces as he does, but makes no action to stop him even as the delicate pat turns into an aggressive nougie that forces her to grit her teeth and brace herself against the machine behind her. “Little Tanezuka-chan!”

Hana’s _really_ getting irritated, now.

“Stop it!” barks the brother from behind her, all of a sudden. He jumps into action, and, despite being half the size of the kid pestering his sister, grabs his wrist and flings his arm away.

Hana blinks. What exactly is she witnessing? It’s like something out of a TV show.

“Leave us alone already!” His confident tone doesn’t last, and his eyes are already shiny with tears. “Why are you always so mean, anyways!”

The guy finally shakes his hand free, and starts snickering – his troupe follows suit soon after. “Tane-kun, it’s okay! You can play too.”

“I don’t _wanna_! Not if _you_ guys are!” yells the boy, his voice cracking. The sister finally intervenes, placing a hand on his shoulder and drawing him back again.

“Hey, Sakko – you better keep that little runt in control. You know what happened last time you tried to attack Youda,” growls another kid. “You pull that shit again and we might bring aniki along, next time.”

At this point Hana has no idea what’s going on, but she’s just about had enough of it. She can’t focus on her game like this and even worse, these guys either smell like they’ve been sitting on a couch for fourteen hours or like they just walked through the cologne section of a department store. She’s losing interest in this whole thing, fast.

“Kaneda?” The sister cracks a grin, or tries to. Her fear shines right through it. “I doubt it… I haven’t seen him around in weeks.”

That really jostles the boys, though. They shift closer, one of them bumping against Hana before shouting, “Don’t fuck around, I’ll bring him and half the family!”

It’s enough to wipe any smugness off of the girl’s face, and she shrinks back. The group seems satisfied enough by this response.

The one of them steps forward again, and before the girl can react he digs his grubby fingers into her already messed-up hair, pulling. “Hey, your hair’s getting pretty dark again. Why haven’t you bleached it yet?”

“Hey, man-“ another pipes up, “not in here, wait till later-“

The brother snaps, again, pushing his sister’s arm back and tackling the kid’s waist. Hoots of protest bloom around Hana as they all jump to their buddy’s defense. The girl leaps from the stool, finally, accosting her brother by his shoulders.

“Hey! What’d we just tell you-“

“You little shit! You got Ryou’s jacket all greasy-“

“I’m calling aniki-“

Hana sighs, pressing both palms against the console before her hard before pushing herself to her feet. There’s enough force behind the movement to push the two boys that’d been leaning against her back, bumping into their friends.

Their attention snaps to her as she turns around to face them, adjusting her hat.

“You bitch…!!” cries the short-haired kid. “What the fuck!?”

“Are you fucking blind!?”

Hana’s floored. She’s met plenty of pampered kids that thought they were tough shit before, but this is like… a level beyond. Part of her doesn’t even know how to respond! I mean, sure, junior high school wasn’t all fun but it certainly wasn’t some kind of fucking gang-drama, either, holy shit! She seriously feels like she’s in an old American movie.

“My bad, I can’t really enjoy my game with you guys hanging over me, so I was just about to head upstairs,” is all she can think to say, brutally honest and with a kind of calmness even she wasn’t expecting.

The lights around them hit her face in a way that makes the kids realize she’s not anyone they know and certainly not someone younger than them. Hesitation flashes across their features before they glance at their ‘leader’, the oldest loser – Youda?

The guy tilts his chin up. “Who’re _you_?”

Hana is once again given a feeling of whiplash by the question. Her eyes move from one punk to another (they’re really.. _not_ punks, though, just acting like it, they’re dressed like any other trendy high schooler save for the hentai girl t-shirt one…) and then back to the leader. Her brow eases, raising high.

Oh, god.

It’s just like two days ago, she realizes.

They’re just like the gang that’d cornered her in the alley, from this angle. Except tiny and with _zero_ intimidation.

Something pulls at the corners of her lips. Then, before she knows it, she’s grinning. Her chest heaves. Laughing.

It’s so absurd.

When her lungs finally give her a break, she has to bring up a hand and wipe at her eyes, catching some eyeliner as she does so.

As she blinks and her vision refocuses, she finds them all still staring at her, bristling and hostile.

_Are you kidding?_

She almost wants to laugh again but she’s all out of juice and by now she _really_ just wants to get back to a game, so she throws them one of her D.Va smiles. “It’s okay, really.”

They exchange a bunch of glances before glaring back at her. “What’re you talking about?”

Hana waves her hands in front of her, showing her teeth again. “It’s fine! Don’t let me get in between… whatever this whole thing is,” she says. “Seriously, I just wanna play some games.”

They seem even more jostled by this, and all their gazes go back to the tough guy, Youda. He’s sizing her up.

Hana sighs, dropping the smile and fixing them with a look more reflective of the disgust and irritation she’s really feeling. Her hands stuff into the pockets of the unzipped hoodie she’s wearing. Part of her wants to just walk away, but she stands her ground. Or, more like the other girl’s ground, but…

“Yo, Youda, Ryou, guys! The next song’s up and it’s your team’s turn!” someone shouts from behind her, presumably from the Dance Ultra station that’s still as lively as ever. “You coming?”

The Youda kid huffs, then pushes through the crowd, past Hana, back towards the front of the arcade. The rest of the little goons follow, each casting her their own unique glare. She smiles sympathetically back at them.

Part of her worries she’s made too much of a ripple already. Apparently there were more politics in this arcade than she was aware of.

With a heavy sigh, she picks up her bag and decides to call it a day altogether.

“Umm-…”

The noise draws her gaze back to her left, where the girl and her little brother were still standing, brows drawn up in confusion.

Hana bites her tongue on a ' _What was that all about?'_ or a ' _You two okay?'_ , she doesn’t want to overextend.

“H-how’d you do that?” the kid asks, stepping up. “You totally told them off…!! Who _are_ you?”

She opens her mouth, eyes widening. She really, _really_ had no idea what was going on here. “Uhh, no. I’m not afraid to tell off a bunch of rude teenagers,” she says with a chuckle, smiling down at him. Seriously what _was_ this, a lawless high school?

“You…” the girl speaks up, hands fidgeting with each other. “You’re new around here, aren’t you?”

Hana seriously wants to roll her eyes, now. She settles on a dubious grin. “Listen, I’m… _really_ not worried about it… Anyways, I gotta run, so you guys have fun and stay out of trouble, alright?” She backs up as she says this, giving a cheeky wave. “Later!”

She hurries to the door, pointedly avoiding making eye contact with the crowd around the Dance Ultra game. For once, the midday air that greets her as she steps outside is _refreshing._

 _Yeesh_ , she thinks, _when did interacting with people get so draining?_

Hanamura buzzes with life around her in the saffron of the late afternoon sun. The arcade kid’s words sit in her mind as she gazes at the people around her - students heading home from class, elderly out shopping, store clerks on their way to their shift, even a couple you-know-whats lingering on the street corners smoking and chattering amongst themselves. She wonders if the group of boys back there were just a bunch of wannabe punks, or what. How much of a grip do they _have_ on this town, to have that kind of influence? The weird ninja guy the other night said he was just ‘taking inventory’ and now Hana was part of that inventory – was the group here really that powerful that they kept tabs on everyone living in the district?

Compared to the explosive, bursting-at-the-seams entertainment mecca that was Busan, Tokyo, or at least this part of it, feels like another _world._ Not just in its quietness and how much less _colorful_ it was than Busan, but…

Thinking about it fills Hana’s head with pressure. In Busan the biggest threat was _killer omnics that were constantly growing and learning, always launching attacks, each assault more and more difficult to fend off than the last_ and here, _here,_ it’s just _organized crime_ that plays that role in people’s lives.

Not that organized crime isn’t _scary._ But holy shit, it’s different from sitting on the edge of your seat every day waiting for that alarm to go off.

Walking through the flocks of townspeople who all have no _idea_ what that feeling is like somehow, just, _really_ made her feel like she was a ghost stuck in the living world and nothing more than that.

 _Great, now I’m all gloomy again,_ she thinks, mentally kicking herself as her head falls.

Hana’s crummy mood gives her the motivation to stop in that hole-in-the-wall game store she’d seen a few times, though. She thinks maybe if she just browses, indulges in her hobby for a minute it’ll help get rid of that feeling of displacement.

It does the opposite.

The store’s selection is seemingly endless and within five minutes of entering, her feet are glued to the ground and she’s thrown five years into the past at the sight of a single box.

It’s not even a fun game. Just a reboot of some really old American platformer. There’s a cartoon character on the cover.

It’d been Overlord’s favorite. They’d play it in the MEKA lounge late into the night sometimes, when the other pilots were busy. It was such a childish game and Hana usually wasn’t really into those, but the pilot lit up so much when he played it that she couldn’t help but enjoy it anyways. She’d get frustrated at losing a mini-game to him, too used to competitive gaming, too heated, and Overlord would laugh (laugh, something he hardly did since entering the MEKA program) and tell her she was too hardcore. “ _You need to take it easy, D.Va! Our job is already so stressful, I don’t know why you like competitive games and esports!”_ She’d never really come up with an answer for that either – they were just fun and got her blood pumping and she liked that.

The boy’s cheeky smile stays imprinted to the back of her eyelids as she blinks down at the box on the shelf (marked down for way less than she’d bought it for the day it came out, having bought it on Overlord’s behalf, he’d been deployed for an attack a few days prior and was still confined to the hospital). She makes herself look away, down the narrow aisle at the dozens upon dozens of other games on display. There are plenty of others that stand out like they’re glow-in-the-dark or something, games she’d played with King and Casino and D.Mon, each cracking open another box of memories that’d been buried beneath countless omnic battles.

She leaves the shop before she can get overwhelmed again.


	4. misfits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for each and every one of the kudos and comments! I didn't get along to answering all of them in time and I'm sorry about that, but they're much appreciated!!! ♡♡

 

The girl (Sachi? Sachiko?) approaches Hana the next day.

She'd purposefully hid away on the third floor, but she’s still found, dammit. She blames her trip down to the main floor to grab something for lunch earlier – that must’ve been what did it. She’s on her second bag of corn chips when someone plops down at the machine next to her.

Hana pretends not to hear at first, like she’s got music playing on her headphones.

“Soooo, then, you’re “D-V-A”, right?” asks the kid, and despite how differently she pronounced it Hana nearly jumps out of her skin at the use of her call name.

Standing up, she sees that, sure enough, it _is_ the one from yesterday. Her brother is there, too, peeking out from behind the machine.

“What…” Hana figures her ruffled feathers give enough of an answer. Surprisingly, there’s nothing malicious in the girl’s gaze, just curiosity. _Right, right – it’s just the initials I used, it’s not actually my call name she means -_ “…Yeah. Why?”

Her eyes go wide and she stands up, bouncing on her heels. “Really!? I knew it…”

Something about being recognized is upsetting to Hana, and her expression sours. “What do you two want? No offense. But if it’s about those guys from yesterday, I’m not really dying to get tangled up with them again.” She tilts her head. “If it’s school drama, shouldn’t you, y’know… get your teacher or parents or something?”

The girl’s brightness gets completely snuffed at this and soon she’s _glaring_ at Hana, to the ex-pilot’s surprise. “ _School drama?_ ”

Hana is uncomfortable. _What_? That’s what it seemed like. Sure, she never really _had_ actual experience with that kind of thing – by the time she was that age, she was already enlisted in military schools and they had zero tolerance for stuff like that – but she’d assumed that’s what it’d been. A bummer that it still happens here, but what can really be done? At least they weren’t getting blown up by sentient machines.

“You _are_ new here, _aren’t_ you?” the girl asks, tone suddenly accusatory.

Hana’s brow raises. “Uhh, yes?”

A long sigh leaves her. “You’re not gonna last very long if you keep up like this. They’re not _just_ bratty school boys.”

 _Huh_? Hana nearly scratches her head. She supposes her expression seems confused enough to prompt the girl to keep going.

“They’re snots that think they own the place because they have ties to the _family_ ,” she continues, arms crossing.

 _Family._ Someone else had used the term yesterday. “What family?” Hana’s so confused. She doesn’t really want to talk to this girl anymore.

Both she and her brother only stare.

“You really don’t…”

Hana narrows her eyes. _Are they just messing with me?_

Then the girl looks in either direction before leaning in close and whispering, “The _Shimada_ clan?”

Shimada…

Oh.

_Oh!_

“Oh!” It hits Hana like a brick to the face. “ _Oh_.”

The girl looks even more suspicious. “You _really_ moved _here_ without knowing…?”

“I-I know who they are,” barks Hana defensively. She’d been through more than enough talks with her officers about them before coming here. She just may have… lost focus during some of those lectures. And up until a few days ago she didn’t even consider them _dangerous_ , at least to herself.

“Riiight,” continued the girl, tilting her head. “Well, their headquarters is a block away. At the castle. Almost every regular at this arcade has some kinda tie to them, whether it’s through relatives or business or whatever…” she trails off, gaze lowering.

This is news to Hana. Sure, it makes sense considering how closeby they were… and also why Rikimaru’s seemed to always be crawling with them… but really? At least half the regulars here had to be high schoolers, at the oldest. This Shimada family must really have their claws around Hanamura if their influence even reached kids.

“Youda, the guy from yesterday,” she continues, voice low as if the punk from before might hear, “his older brother is in the family.” She pouts. “But he’s just a _chinpira_.”

Hana’s head buzzes. “ _Chinpira??”_

“Yeah,” says the girl, not hearing the confusion in her tone.

“Which is…”

This earns her another befuddled look. “ _Chinpira_?”

“Yeah.”

“…Like, a punk. He’s in the family, but he’s just an errand boy. It’s not like he has any power, he just has a special pin and a suit.”

“Oh.”

The air is thick with suspicion now. Like Hana should have known what chinpira meant. What the hell… she had more slang to brush up on, apparently.

“Where are you from? The boonies?” questioned the girl timidly.

“Erm…” Hana stumbles. Where had she told the man from the other night? “I am, yeah.”

She doesn’t like how she’s being questioned, but she was so thrown off earlier… Squaring her shoulders, Hana turns things around. “What about you two? Why was Mr. Boss-man pushing you around yesterday? Seems like a pretty regular thing.”

The girl shrinks back. “That’s…” She bites her lip before saying, “it-it doesn’t matter. He’s always messing with us because our dad got expelled from the family.”

“And because sis is better than Youda at _Fighters_ ,” peeps the brother from somewhere behind them.

“Oh,” Hana suddenly realizes, and she grins. “Oh, that’s it. Hah! Guys really can’t stand it when a girl’s better at them at games, can they?”

She laughs again and gives the kid a friendly nudge, but she only glares up at her before turning on her brother. “That’s _not_ it! It’s because of dad!”

“Okay, okay,” replies Hana, holding up her hands in an attempt to calm the girl’s apparently hot temper. “But there are plenty of other people here my age, and older. How come they don’t ever step in and stop those punks?”

“They don’t care,” says Sachiko, crossing her arms and glaring down at the floor below them.

The ex-pilot rubs her forehead. She’s _genuinely_ confused now. “Okaaay, so… is this place, like, _run_ by the yakuza? And that’s why no one bats an eye at the… bullying?”

Sachiko looks up at her. Hana notices her hands are clenched at her side. Is she… _angry?_ Why?

“Nevermind,” she huffed, pouting. “You don’t care after all. I can tell.”

“Hey, hang on, I didn’t mean-“

But she just tosses her head. “Come on, Taka! This was a bad idea.”

“Big sis! Hold onnnnn!” protests the boy as he’s dragged off by his hand, gazing back over his shoulder at Hana as they storm off towards the stairs.

As they disappear down the hallway, Hana sits back in her chair, leaning against the console behind her, game long forgotten. Gears in her head turn slowly and reluctantly – sure, she wanted to stay under the radar… but here was a kid who seemed to know the crowd at the arcade well and the Hanamura _community_ even better. Maybe getting some tidbits on things wasn’t such a bad idea. And it might get rid of that hazy uneasiness she’s had in her gut ever since her encounter with ponytail ninja man. There’s no telling how long she’d be stuck here, after all.

Hana sits on that thought for a while before bouncing out of her seat and making for the exit.

 

 

It’s hotter than yesterday, and a thick, choking humidity sits in the air, stubborn even as the sun has sunk behind the horizon. Ignoring the mild discomfort Hana paces to the edge of the staircase leading down the side of the arcade and looks over the street below.

Did she miss her chance? She grumbles under her breath and starts down the stairs. Blonde girl hadn’t been anywhere inside. And it’s not like she didn’t stand out, with that hair. So where…

“Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey!”

“ _Agh!”_

The sound of a scuffle draws Hana’s attention down an alley beside the arcade. Just beyond the bubble of light provided by a motion-sensing lamp outside someone’s front gate, lurking in the tight gap between buildings, are a group of familiar silhouettes. Hana winces, turning her head so the bill of her hat shades her eyes from the bring light.

Sure enough, she’s found her girl – along with the _boys._ The _problem boys._

They’re shoving her against the wall, rough, too rough, two goonies holding her struggling arms in place and another keeping her head flat against the concrete by a tight grip in her hair. They’re giggling, snorting, as they smear something into her long, tangled locks.

“Just let it happen, Sakko!”

“C’mon, this color suits ya!”

“Dammit!! Let… me go…!”

The outburst is ended with another heavy _smack_ as her head is shoved against the wall again. Hana flinches. The boys giggle as they continue haphazardly smearing what she can only guess is hair dye? Bleach? onto the girl’s grown-out roots.

Then she steps forward, two, three, leaving the ring of light, and prompting the guys to take notice of her.

“Hey, who’s-“

“A girl?”

“Ain’t that the snobby lady from yesterday?”

She keeps stepping closer, not slowing her pace as they momentarily tear their attention away from ‘Sakko’. They eye her up and down. Dirty, pissed-off looks – again, not really something Hana was accustomed to.

“What’s your problem, bitch? We’re busy,” says the one with his hands buried in the girl’s hair. He’s got to be a few centimeters shorter than Hana.

She sighs. “I just wanna talk to her.”

“You can talk once we’re done,” sneers another boy, a bit taller, wearing an oversized tee and sweatpants, but still younger than Hana.

She pulls her hands out of her pockets, and shifts her weight onto one foot, sticking a hip out. “I don’t wanna wait.”

“If we say you’re gonna wait, you’re gonna fucking wait,” barks a kid from behind the main three, and as he steps forward Hana finds he’s even more familiar than the others – yes, he’s the leader boy… what was his name…

“Yoga?” Hana tips her head at him. “Was that your name?”

He huffs out his nostrils.

She hasn’t really _fought_ anyone in a while. Actually, she hasn’t done _anything_ like this since before the accident, since before she left the army, fighting was the _last_ thing they would’ve wanted her doing in rehab (besides, maybe, piloting a mech). And she knows she’s out of shape. But these kids are chumps! High schoolers! If she’s fought malicious robot giants before, she can scare off a couple of idiots like this.

Lost in her thoughts, it catches her off-guard when the boy, Youga, Youda, whatever his name was rushes forwards and grabs hold of her right shoulder, intending to throw her against the wall or the ground or something – but it’s like someone lit a match inside her and instinct kicks in almost immediately – her gut response is to take hold of the hand, tug it between them, push forwards with all her weight to off-balance him and then jab her knee between his legs.

He makes a noise kinda similar to a really loud hiccup before doubling over, his fingers twitching before his wrist slides from her grip to fly to his crotch.

 _Critical hit_ , thinks Hana with a smile before looking up just in time to catch two more boys disengaging from Sakko and coming at her instead. She glances between them a few times before diving at the guy on the right, grabbing hold of his fists with her own hands, tugging them apart and, in his moment of surprise, thrusting her head forwards and bashing her skull against his. Not really the best move, but it was a heat-of-the-moment kind of thing, the first action that jumped into her mind and… well… despite the throbbing now sounding through her head, it works.

He wobbles backwards, lowering his guard enough for her to plant a shoe in his chest and send him crashing into the wall.

The other boy, left-boy, whom she’d forgotten about is quick to act, though. Before she can even turn around he’s there, grabbing her from behind and clamping his arms around her midsection. She struggles for a good seven or eight seconds. His head is too low for her to try another head-bash (not to mention her skull still fucking _hurts!)_. She grabs at his arms and tries pulling them away, but he’s _persistent –_ and she can see his other friend getting a punch ready now that she’s vulnerable.

Then, in the shifting of weight between them something happens. The wrong amount of pressure, of tension, is put on a section of her back – a _bad_ section, a scar from the accident that healed as much as it _would_ but was apparently still very, _very_ sensitive, and her heartrate spikes. Letting out a yelp, she tugs _hard_ at the kid’s arms, loosening them from her enough to squirm free and bringing a heel back behind her to hit him around his nads for good measure, before he can move to grab her again. He grunts and without thinking Hana twirls around, elbowing him in the cheek and then grabbing him by his greasy black hair and shoving his head into the concrete wall beside them.

He stays in a clump on the ground after that, groaning. When Hana turns to the third guy he hesitantly lowers his fist, then glances at his friends cringing on the ground, then gulps and throws a panicked look between her and Sakko before turning tail and running the other way.

Her blood’s pumping a little too fast, and the alley became a little too dark – she doesn’t realize how fast she was breathing for a few seconds, but once she does she stops immediately. Her eyes go to blonde girl and then she nods aggressively, ignoring the white visible in her eyes. “C’mon. This way.”

Then they half-jog, half-walk back onto the street, further and further away from the arcade, putting more than a few blocks between them and the scene before slowing beside a closed-up shop.

It’s quiet save for both their panting, and a few schoolkids nearby gawk at them – probably more at the youth than Hana, since she’s half-coated in bleach.

Hana turns to her. “Okay. Here’s the deal – I’m gonna help clean you up and get you something to drink, and _you’re_ gonna fill me in on what I need to know about this town.”

She opens her mouth like she’s going to protest, then closes it and nods instead.

Good choice.

 

 

 

They stop at the nearest convenience store, running in the bathroom to clean up the spilled dyes as much as possible. Hana tells her to pick out any drink she wants and in the meantime buys an oversized t-shirt for the girl. She seems nervous the whole time they’re in the store, moreso when they check out, and once they’re a block or two away she outright tells Hana that the guy at the counter was part of Youda’s circle, too.

To be safe, they hurry nearly almost all the way back to Hana’s complex, and stop at a tiny children’s park (empty, since it’s dusk now) to open the drinks. The girl pulls on the black tee over her school uniform (it’s covered in spots of bleach), then gratefully starts on her lemon soda.

After that she talks – like Hana thought, she was full of good information on Hanamura. How it was essentially the Shimada Clan’s backyard, how anyone excommunicated from the family was scorned – how her own father was one of those cases, though with the threat of death hanging over his head he’d fled entirely without even telling his family where he was going, leaving them to the sharks. They didn’t have the resources to move out. The town was like a whirlpool, sucking in anyone who got involved with it, crushing their will and leaving them to rest in shambles at the bottom.

She even advises Hana on spots to stay away from. Shops, streets, and what hours. Some had reasons – there were operations running out of there, or it was the home of a subsidiary of the Shimada family, or that it was just a spot the folks she wouldn’t want to run into liked to hang around at. Hana’s surprised by the complexity. Hanamura had seemed like such a simple and sleepy district.

Apparently that atmosphere was due only to the influence of the Shimada clan. The head of the clan – not even Sachiko knew his name, though her father worked under him – could regulate what kind of stores came into Hanamura, who lived on what street, how much nightlife there was or wasn’t, when the police (“police”) made their patrols, rent, so on and so forth. Actual town offices and police boxes were purely decorative. There were only a handful of spots outside his reach. Hana assumes her building is one of them.

Sachiko’s father hadn’t told her clearly why he’d left when he finally did – only that he didn’t agree with what the clan was doing lately and how. But because of that she was now the new favorite subject of bullying at the arcade – which was the central hangout for Hanamura’s game-loving crowd.

As weird as it is to say, Hana finds it interesting, somehow. Sure, it’s awful that a criminal organization has this much control – but it’s not like she has the power or even interest to combat that. Compared to her life experiences, all of it just seems like it’s on such a smaller scale, and it’s more distant to her because of that.

Except, for that one night. _That_ meeting _definitely_ didn’t make her feel ‘distant’ to the threat of the yakuza in Hanamura.

She mentions it to Sachiko.

“What!?” The girl nearly jumps off the bench. “Wait – what… what did the guy look like…?”

There’s a dry horror in her tone that makes Hana nervous against her will. “Umm, well. A ninja?”

“A… ninja.” She deadpans.

“Yeah. Like, baggy clothes, weird sandals, a bunch of belts and satchels… Nothing I’ve seen before, not in real life. Like some video game character.”

Sachiko gives Hana an _are-you-serious_ look. “What… what about his _face_? How old was he?”

Hana thinks, resting her cheek on her shoulder as she stares up at the nearby streetlight. “Huhhh… Hard to tell. He could’ve been anywhere from 20 to 40. His face was kind of scary and sharp, like he’d been scowling from the day he popped out his mom. But all his friends seemed to respect him and follow his orders.”

Sachiko purses her lips and her hands fidget nervously in her lap.

Hana side-eyes her. “Why?”

“If he was asking about who you were, and ordering around the others, he might’ve… been…”

Hana gapes. “Wait, you think he was the head honcho? Isn’t that guy supposed to be super old, though?”

The schoolgirl shakes her head. “No, but – his son is the real threat.”

“Son?”

“Yeah,” dark eyes meet hers again, “… _Shimada Hanzo._ ”

“Shimada, Hanzo…” Hana tries to mentally match the name with the face, and finds it kind of fits.

“Yeah…” Sachiko’s voice has become frail, quiet, a breath barely strong enough to reach Hana, and she keeps glancing around. “He’s… not someone _anyone_ wants to run into. Not even Youda.”

The memory from that night resurfaces. “He was _strong_ ,” she mutters in thought.

Sachiko whirls around. “You – you didn’t _fight_ him, did you!?”

Hana laughs. “I mean, not really – he threw me at the wall before I had a chance.”

The girl is completely pale. “How… how did you even get away? Anyone he goes after usually ends up beaten up badly, at the very least…”

“It seemed like he lost interest when-…” … _when he realized I’m a foreigner,_ she thinks to herself, but holds the words back for her own privacy. “…When he realized I’m not anyone important or rich or dangerous or whatever, ahaha.”

Sachiko shivered. “Talk about lucky…”

“You think he’ll come after me if he finds out I beat up those guys earlier?” she wonders, leaning back against the bench.

“No, definitely not. Youda’s gang… and even the family guy they’re connected to, they’re all _leagues_ away from Hanzo’s level. They’re probably just like ants to him…”

“Huh.”

After that the conversation sort of dies off. Sachiko says she has to head back home since she sent her little brother running that way earlier, when she first ran into Youda. It was around dinner time and he’d get weepy if he didn’t eat on time. Hana doesn’t have an excuse to leave since her schedule is embarrassingly empty, so she just replies with a “gotcha” and parts ways.

 _Shimada Hanzo._ Her favorite districts of Busan had their own local celebrities, and it seemed Hanamura did, as well. What a lucky guy, she thinks – born into a powerful family, can spend his days going anywhere doing anything and not having to worry about saving anyone except his own syndicate.

 

-

 

If Hana had to compare the passing of time here to anything, it’d be glue. Sometimes runny, sometimes with clumps that make a day feel longer than it really is, if she started really thinking about it or, god forbid, try and change how she experiences it, it’d only end messily.

The next time she’s at the arcade, she finds that the Youda guy and his gang have made some serious space between themselves and Sachiko, and although they still toss dirty looks Hana’s way now and then, they don’t approach them. It’s good enough. Sachiko and her brother are more sociable too, if only with Hana – it seemed like no one else in the arcade had the balls to reach out to those two even with the yakuza wannabes off their back for the time being.

They’re grateful for her help in their own way though. The boy, Taka, more outwardly, thanking her and throwing around words like ‘hero’. The girl is more subdued about it, bringing in a list of apps she found useful for getting around town one day, and another day bringing in a shoddily-made cake from the combined efforts of her, her brother, and her mom.

Hana takes it home, that day, oddly elated by the gift. Of course, along with that is that gnawing sadness that always has to butt in whenever she’s feeling good. For all its kindness, the act of gratitude just makes her think of home. The praise reminds her of her fans.

When she gets ‘home’ that day, the landlady invites her to eat with a couple others in the main office. Hana doesn’t recall it being a holiday or anything, but for some reason the elderly woman had made sukiyaki.

Setting her backpack and the little paper bag with the cake in it by the door, Hana takes a seat around the short table placed in the center of the cleared-out lobby. It’s as gray and dreary as ever, moreso with the lack of daylight. But the smell of salty broth, cooking meat and a dozen types of vegetables hanging in the air does something to lift the atmosphere.

There are four others seated at the table. She finds out from listening to their conversations that one is a school teacher, one owns a tailoring shop, one is a receptionist at a nearby cat hospital and the fourth is a single mother who’d only recently sent her two children to live in downtown Tokyo after they’d lost their house.

All four seemed battered, worn-out. A result of Hanamura’s carefully-pruned society. Like they’d ended up in Utatori because they had nowhere else to turn.

Conversation is awkward and if Hana had forgotten why she hadn’t been actively trying to make friends here, she remembers now. All the small talk subjects – _where are you from, who is your family, where do you work, where did you go to school, how did you come to be in Hanamura_ are next to unanswerable unless she just makes up some fantasy past life for herself out of nowhere.

So she shrinks back from the table, bowl in hand, opting to watch the program on TV instead. The audio isn’t easy to hear over the subdued babble of the people around her along with the landlady, but there are subtitles.

It’s the national news, and they’re talking about immigration. Immigration from South Korea.

Her eating slows until she’s just sitting there, pushing around her food with her chopsticks, eyes glued to the screen.

There it was, clear as day, the coastline of Busan. Or scenes, at least. Crushed buildings, flattened city blocks and tents all over the place, poking out of the piles upon piles of rubble.

Yeah, they’re saying something about immigration to Japan. That there’s been protests against allowing that volume of foreigners into the country in such a short amount of time even if they are refugees. But Japan is close in more ways than one, so it’s the most accessible to them.

The news cuts the scenes away from Korea and back to Japan, down further south where neighborhoods meant for housing refugees had been set up. They interview some. The tension is there. But Hana can see it clear as day in their eyes – a little hostility between neighbors was nothing to these people, _nothing_ compared to what they’d been through.

She feels sick and hot all at once as commercials come on. Guilt twists her stomach into a tight knot.

“Horrible, isn’t it?” She barely noticed the landlady had taken a seat next to her. “They’ve been through so much, and people have the nerve to say they don’t belong here…?”

Hana tentatively makes eye contact with the woman, and is surprised to find more sympathy there than she expected.

“Ugh.” The tailor grunts, an older man with thin, gray hair. “Can’t believe it. I mean, they’re still getting blown apart in their _own_ country – why should we just leave them there to die while omnics take over the whole peninsula?”

This shakes Hana to her core and she stands all the sudden. “Uh…. Uhh, sorry, I-I have to go…” Without thinking she hurries to the door, out the door, cold ground meeting the bottoms of her socks but even after realizing she’d left her shoes and bags behind, she makes a break for her room.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

Genji Shimada is having _A Fucking Day._

Well, it’d started _out_ alright. If he closes his eyes he can practically _feel_ the softness of the blankets around his legs, the warmth of some Kansai college-girl curled up at his side, the smoothness of her milky skin as he lazily ran a hand over her side and the puff of the contented breath that the motion drew from her. Perfect. _Perfeeeccctt_!

Eyes shut, he leans back in his seat and rests his head against the window, letting his mind wander into the previous night – further away from all the shit he was going through _now._ He and Kimura had been out with some third dude… some guy who’d been helping out Kimura’s family, hacking into this and stealing information from that, fuck if he could remember. One way or another they’d agreed to go out for drinks together. A simple plan, but everything had changed when they’d found out the guy had never been laid before. He had to be older than Genji, but not older than Kimura, so probably his late 20’s. Either way, it was Osaka and they were _not_ about to let something like that slide, so they’d hit town.

It didn’t take long to find what they needed, but of course when did it ever? It was maybe the second club they got to (the first had way too many family men inside). Kimura had a circle of admirers around him in a matter of minutes. He was playing it fair, giving everyone the same amount of attention, but Genji could see plain as day he already had his sights set on one in particular. A younger woman, with longer hair, glasses, dressed like she just came from the workplace instead of like she was there to party, and an innocence to her rounded features that contrasted with the intense interest with which she was checking out the man at the head of the table. The bastard, always after those types! Not to mention he was barely hiding the fact he was yakuza tonight, ditching the salaryman look they usually adopted and leaving the top few buttons of his olive dress-shirt undone.

Either way, it seemed he had their third friend more than covered in that department, so Genji, the perfect amount of alcohol in him for the world around him to buzz a little more than it should, had set off on his own task. A few drinks later he plopped down beside a stiff, lonely-looking woman who’d barely put a dent in her own drink (turning around and catching Kimura’s confident grin from across the hall) and got to work.

Though he can only recall bits and pieces, he remembers her being stubborn, rude even at first. Like he’d carried a stench on him she was repelled by – so he’d been careful, only continued the conversation if she’d seemed willing and to his luck she grew more and more willing the more he opened his mouth and let loose some stupid shit in an attempt at conversation.

A few more drinks later, for all her biting comments and initial hostility she was giggling bubbly, leading him by his wrist a little too fast for his clumsy feet to keep his balance towards a love hotel crammed between two more high-rises across the street. Give or take a couple meaningless minutes and her thick shell of an exterior (along with her clothes, he can’t really remember what they looked like, only that they were a pain in the ass to take off) had all melted away, instead of demeaning comments about his basic as fuck-all personality the only sound coming out of her lips were breathy attempts at his name, and Genji had long forgotten the reason he’d even gone out that night in the first place.

The chime of his phone snaps him from his daydream and his eyes fly open, met not with warm bed sheets and club-girl but the harsh lighting of the bullet train’s interior along with the cautionary text posted on the headrest of the chair in front of him.

Rubbing his forehead, he reaches for his phone on the empty seat next to his. The name on the screen doesn’t come as a surprise, mainly because he only uses that notification tone (a second-long song byte of a squealing cartoon girl) for _one_ person.

“Guhhhggghhhhh… _Hanzo…”_ he groans to himself, tapping open the message as he sinks further down in the cushions. “I can’t _will_ the train to go any faster.”

The message loads.

_Brother._

_Do not ignore my messages._

_You should be on your way to Tokyo now. Father will be awaiting both of us at noon._

_Arrive on time. Do not be late._

Genji sighs, pulling off his headband and running a hand through his hair as he contemplates giving his brother the satisfaction of a response.

Yes, the day had gone downhill shortly after that picture-perfect morning he’d been fantasizing about.

Her eyelids had fluttered open and she’d beamed up at Genji before shifting closer to him. And her lips had curved into a smile that told him she probably remembered much more of the prior night than he did.

Normally he probably would’ve made himself scarce by then, but he was more hung over than usual and his legs didn’t want to move yet.

“You’re cute in the morning, babe,” he’d muttered, his own voice hoarse, smirking lazily, wondering what her name had been. She shifted closer still and he adjusted his touch on her back in turn, breath catching when she leaned in and planted a kiss right above the crook of his neck. Desire pushed away some of his drowsiness and he chuckled at her. “Already, huh?”

She withdrew. “Can you really talk? Genji- _kun_ ,” there was barely enough time to process her words before she shifted beneath the covers and started twining one of her legs between his.

She may as well have sucker-punched him in the fucking stomach, doing that. In an instant he hauled himself over her and continued their stupid game of twister under the sheets. He grinned at the look of surprise on her face, accentuated by the curtain of short black hair that splayed out around it on the pillows.

“God, you look like a fucking angel right now,” he slurred as the surprise on her expression slid into pride.

He felt a hand weave into his hair. “Then you can be my _devil~.”_

 _Woah-ho. That’s a new one,_ he’d thought to himself, stifling a laugh as she guided him further downwards –

“ _GENJI!”_ A bang at the door was mistaken for a fucking _gunshot_ by one or both of them and they nearly jumped out of their skin, Genji flying into a sitting position to glare across the cramped hotel room. Another knock, loud and visibly shaking the thing on its hinges. “Genji, get the hell up! You got trouble!”

“Fuck,” he’d muttered, tearing off the sheets and throwing his clothes on with no regard to the woman sitting startled half to death and wondering what the hell was going on.

Another crashing knock. As expected of Kimura, the guy could’ve been twice Genji’s size. “ _GENJI!_ I’m serious!”

“Yeah, I’m _coming_!” he shouted back as he struggled to throw his shoes on without ruining them. They were nice imports from America, still a pristine white, he’d just bought the pair last month, the last thing he wanted to do was crush the backs of them because he was in a hurry. “Hang on!”

The girl in the bed was muttering something in confusion, but did it matter? He was gonna peace out sooner rather than later anyways, regardless. With a little salute and a grin, he said goodbye, giving her barely enough warning to cover herself before swinging open the door to reveal Kimura’s rougher frame.

“Trouble. Family trouble.”

“Shit. You have anything on you?” he asked, shutting the door behind him and hurrying after his friend down the tiny, still-dark hall.

“Not _my_ family,” replied Kimura with a sharp glance over his shoulder. “ _Yours._ ”

That’d been enough to shift Genji’s demeanor or completely. Fell out of party mode like a trapdoor had just been opened beneath his feet. _His_ family. _Now_ he understood the urgency.

His sudden silence prompted Kimura to hand him something as they both headed down the stairwell and outside – his phone, another clean one he’d picked up when he’d gotten to Osaka a few months ago. Like he always did when he got here. Loaded on all his contacts, settings, pictures, whatever from a disk, he had it all figured out since Kansai was his go-to place when things got hot with the family back in Hanamura. But why…

As soon as he saw the screen, Genji knew the reason – there was a text from Hanzo. All it read was ‘ _Brother. Be home by noon. Father’s demand.’_ No question of whether the number he was contacting _was_ his younger brother or not. Just a command.

Suddenly his phone felt like a live grenade and he tossed it from one hand to another as they walked into the harsh morning light. “ _Agh_ —“

“No time for that, grab a taxi. We’re sending ya to Osaka Station pronto. Check the time on that message – “ he did, it was from 3 hours ago – “in that much time he might already have some guys here on the lookout for you, and, well… I’d take a bullet for ya, Genji, but I’m definitely not gonna get knee-deep in shit by having myself or my family spotted helping out the Shimada’s blacksheep.”

“Yeah, I get it, I get it,” was Genji’s resigned response as they headed for the nearest four-way intersection. “Fuck. They seriously got my number again? I got a blank phone and everything.”

“Your information guy’s really something,” grumbled Kimura. “Kinda concerning that he’s got tabs on the phone networks in Kansai too… ain’t even Shimada territory.”

“Guess I’m gonna need to make friends further south,” Genji joked, scanning the intersection for taxis. One was stopped on the opposite side, outside a closed-up izakaya. “Hey, your friend get what he was going for?”

“I’m checking in on him, next,” Kimura said, some semblance of humor returning to his tone. “Hope he’s not throwing around the same embarrassing lines _you_ were, back there.”

Genji smirked up at the man. “Hah, what the fuck do you expect, man? Poetry? Besides, she was eating it up.”

Kimura laughed, patting his friend heavily on the back. “Don’t get yaself killed up in Tokyo, Shimada. Not to agree with your brother, but if it’s the big man himself you’re meeting with, it’s probably better if ya haul ass and don’t get distracted on the way, either.”

The mention of his family killed his mood a bit, and Genji deflated, his smirk a ghost of what it’d been moments ago. “Yeah, of course.”

When he’d started onto the crosswalk Kimura called out, “I’ll check in down with my guys in Hiroshima and let ya know if I find anyone there willing to give ya a roof, too, next time ya leave town. Hang in there till then, bud.”

Genji waved over his shoulder, gaze trained on the taxi across the street. Making sure he hadn’t spotted him yet, or Kimura, or them talking. For all the times he’d relied on the guy for a place to stay, it’d be past stupid and just plain scummy to have _his_ family find out. All they knew for now was that he was hiding out somewhere in Kansai. Who was hosting him and in what city, well – it seemed his clan’s information dealer hadn’t been able to crack that, yet.

But the fact Hanzo now had his phone number and an estimate on his location was alarming enough to put him on edge.

Unfortunately, Kimura was right – as much as he loved to blow off orders, if his father was involved, well, there were no questions asked.

Thinking about it put him in a foul mood, and he’d stayed like that for the entire taxi ride, practically throwing money at the old guy in front when they arrived (stiffing the bill could lead to him going to the police, police investigation could lead to his family finding out where he was, so unless Kimura’s family was involved he was more or less on probation when he was out hiding in Osaka). Even better, it’d started raining out of nowhere when they reached the station and in his rush he stepped in a _fucking_ puddle. No time to deal with the dirt stain on his nice shoe, though, nope. _Thanks_ , Hanzo.

So here he is – jaw clenched from thinking about the whole ordeal again, emitting enough hatred to fill the whole train car. He hadn’t even had time to shower that morning, so more likely than not he reeks of vodka and sweat and whatever perfume that girl had practically doused herself in.

Fuming, he stares out the window at the same late-morning landscape of the Nagoya countryside he’d seen a million times in the past 6-ish years. It’s too bright, but if he looks at his phone instead he’ll get more worked up over that stupid text from Hanzo.

The snack cart comes around at some point, and, thinking food will improve his mood, Genji gets a granola bar. He takes one, two bites before a violent queasiness hits him and he rushes to the bathroom. He barely makes it to the toilet before he begins puking his guts out.

When all is said and done, his anger is snuffed, instead replaced with exhaustion. Acceptance. He watches absently as the last contents of his stomach get sucked down the drain before averting his gaze to the cute little Tokaido mascot accompanying the caution sign posted above the toilet. Now he can add the smell of vomit to the list of stenches clinging on him from the past 24 hours. With luck, Hanzo will catch a good whiff of it and get the greeting he deserves.

Genji rinses his face before heading back to his row, ignoring the pointed glares of the other customers in the car that’d just overheard him. He sighs at the window, at that same old landscape, thinking about how fucking stupid it was he seriously had to run away from home now and then just to escape his hell-family. Escape! Not like doing that was possible, but if he lost himself enough in the noise of the city and the perfume of people who didn’t know him maybe he could manage to escape for a night or a week or a month or so, at least until he was inevitably pulled back to Tokyo.

He wonders why he was even mad in the first place. Hanzo always tracked him down one way or another when he tried to disappear, drew him back into the family business and reminded him of the huge weight that being an heir to a crime syndicate entailed. Here he is again, dragged by his leash back home after indulging in the illusion of freedom as he had.

Well, it’s not like he doesn’t miss Hanamura in the first place. Like it or not, he grew up there and it had its charm. It’s still home. It’s just when things get a little dicey for him – he pisses off Hanzo too much, pisses off his dad, something big happens in the business, there’s a conflict that could involve him – _then_ he makes himself scarce, for his own good.

But he can’t leave town too often. Partly because he doesn’t want to provoke his family too much, partly because he doesn’t want to risk his hideout being compromised altogether. Which means regardless of what this meeting was about (if it even _had_ any relevance to Genji personally, or if it was just an important clan meeting their father wanted his sons to be present at) he’d have to stick around at home for a while again.

Leaning his head against the window, Genji lets out _another_ long, half-sigh, half-groan, and melts further into his seat.

_Whatever._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i originally wasn't planning on introducing Genji this soon (or even having a scene from his point of view prior to him and Hana's first encounter), but things changed I guess. please bear with his absolute fuckboy-ness LMAOO  
> idk if honorifics still sound weird and weeb-y when used in shit that's written in english, but I may still throw them in here and there when absolutely necessary Just Because. i dunno ahaha
> 
> now that more of the town + arcade exposition is done w though we can focus more on Hana! and Genji since he's (on his way) back! until next time o(_ _o)


End file.
